No spoilers here for the final season of “Breaking Bad,” which launched Sunday on a typically tragic note, but it’s time to compare notes.

Once you catch up on the series, counting down 15 more episodes on AMC (split into eight this season, eight next), you’ll no doubt be reminded of another brilliant TV antihero. How does Walter White, spectacularly played by Bryan Cranston, compare to Tony Soprano, the James Gandolfini HBO creation, in terms of the possibility of redemption? In terms of sheer evil?

Walt began as a sympathetic character, a high-school chemistry teacher whose cancer diagnosis sent him on a crazy path to cooking meth in order to provide for his family. Faulty logic resulted in misadventures that were not only illegal but deadly. His descent into amoral drug kingpin and deranged killer has been steady. He is now a power-mad king of Shakespearean proportions.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.